News round up: assisted dying; care levy; asylum hunger strike

Yarl’s Wood, the Bedfordshire detention centre blighted by controversy since its opening in 2001, was in chaos yesterday after police were called to a disturbance involving around 50 women detainees on their fourth day of a hunger strike.

The group were protesting against the treatment of foreign nationals at the detention centre. According to sources, 26 women entered a secure corridor where they stayed for much of the afternoon. Two detainees fainted and a window was said to have been smashed.

Margo MacDonald’s assisted suicide Bill is “morally ambiguous” and would encourage suicide tourism to Scotland if it became law, a leading right-to-die campaigner has warned.

Edward Turner, of Dignity in Dying, said that the proposed law also risked changing society’s views of the disabled. Mr Turner, who travelled to the Swiss clinic Dignitas with his dying mother four years ago to allow her to end her life, said that Ms MacDonald’s inclusion of people who had been physically incapacitated raised troubling questions about the value of the lives of the disabled.

The UK Border Agency’s failure to manage its workload is penalising individuals, draining public funds and jeopardising confidence in the asylum and immigration system, according to a report published today.

The report, by the parliamentary ombudsman, finds that the UKBA still has “a long way to go” to ensure that its administration, complaints handling procedures and remedy mechanisms are adequate.

Radical proposals for a £20,000 compulsory inheritance levy to help pay for Gordon Brown’s social care plans may be endorsed by the government before the general election.

The health secretary, Andy Burnham, believes he may get the backing for a compulsory plan from Downing Street, but influential cabinet members are still agonising over whether to be explicit about it on the eve of the poll.